All I feel is anger
My mum was a functioning alcoholic for the first 15 years of my life. She split from my dad when I was a baby and it was always just me and her.
I remember loving her when I was little but every night at around 4pm she would begin drinking. I was always clean and fed so everyone praised her for what a good job she was doing as a single parent.
From a young age I remember feeling sick and dreading getting home from school, pouring out her vodka and coke and replacing it with just coke and just wanting to be out the house. I asked for my ninth birthday if she would just not drink that night as I had a friend staying and she was raging.
When I turned 15 something quite traumatic happened in the family and she began to drink all the time, everything wrong in her life she blamed me- she was sacked from multiple jobs and sleeping with men half her age. One night she left the front door open overnight and my dog ran away and even then that was my fault. She woke me up in the middle of the night to shout at me when I had school the next day, would threaten suicide and I was so scared that this would happen so I never told my dad what was going on . One night I found a box full of empty bottles and my mum lost it, she sent me away to stay with my dad and then realised that she regretted it and wanted me to move back but he wouldn’t allow it but still this was my fault. She posted things about me on Facebook that my friends parents saw and people made fun of me in school for but I still loved her and wanted her to get better.
This pattern of me wanting to help and her being nasty and pushing me away then being nice then back to nasty repeated for years until last year when I had my child. I decided enough was enough and that I couldn’t keep putting myself through this so went no contact with my mother. She has never met my son which I believe is for the best and I haven’t spoken to her in over a year and a half but I think about her now more than ever.
Since having my child I feel so much hatred towards her. How for years I was always second place to drink and after experiencing the love I have for my son I would never want to hurt him and that I would do anything for him. Why couldn’t she love me like that? I hate her for the life she gave me and for the way she treated me. I don’t believe she ever loved me because I would walk to the end of the earth to make sure my son felt safe and now all I feel is hate towards her (that she showed towards me for years).
I don’t know how to move on with my life when every day I’m left wondering why didn’t she love me like this? Is there something wrong with me that meant I wasn’t enough of a reason to stop drinking. I don’t feel any love towards her at all anymore and just want to get on with my life but I can’t get rid of this feeling and don’t know what to do.
A lot of things you wrote rang true with me.
I felt totally in awe of my mum when I was little, and she doted on me. Just like you, I was always clean and fed and she used to sew me dresses and take me to fun places. In many ways it was an idyllic childhood, which makes things a bit complicated looking back: sometimes I feel like I don't have much right to complain.
You mentioned pouring out your mum's vodka and coke, I did the same (in my case, it was usually red wine). She fluctuated between being quite honest about her 'self medicating' and being incredibly angry if I asked her to stop drinking. For me, the excessive drinking started after she married my step-dad - I would have been about 9 - but I can't really remember the extent of it beforehand.
I never knew my dad, but my step-dad and I had a consistently bad relationship. I believe I was scapegoated because of their marital issues. I played up to that. Dramatically.
I remember when I was in my 20s something odd happened. It's stuck in my mind ever since...
...I had come home for Christmas and mum and my stepdad had been drinking, heavily. At about 2am, my stepdad woke me up to a call from my mum; she was out of her head. She'd wandered off, was sitting by a river somewhere, and was half lost/half threatening to 'jump'. My stepdad didn't know how to coax her back, so had turned to me, and I talked her home. We never mentioned it again. I tried to ask mum about it, but she met any questions with big rage.
It struck me that my experiences are similar to yours, @stripeyblanket. I can relate to that push/pull feeling. It's very disorientating. I had cancer a few years back, and the same pattern of behaviour persisted, even though I had hoped that my being very ill would somehow change things for us. She broke a lot of promises when I had cancer - the main one being that she would visit me - it broke my heart waiting for her to visit. I've not recovered from that. I often feel like I'm lost at sea and worry that my feeling rejected dictates my day-to-day mindset.
My mother seems to have stopped drinking these days, but lives a reclusive and very angry life. She tends to only want to talk about 'nice things'. Anything that rocks the boat is met with anger and frozen out.
I don't have a child, and am now in my 40's (yikes). There's a strong pull to adopt these days, but I am concerned that my brain chemistry is such that I won't be able to address the trauma that adopted children face, particularly in their teenage years. I don't want to perpetuate my sense of loss/anger. I've been reading a lot about therapeutic parenting and am really stuck by how much thought people put into parenting. I can imagine my mother scoffing as she reads about the 'non-violent resistance' some parents have to deploy when parenting their kids. I was violent a couple of times as a teenager (smashed plates in response to mum's drinking).
You sound like a very loving parent. As your son grows up, I hope he will see how strong you've been for him.
I hope I haven't made this reply all about me. I feel like we have some shared experiences and it's nice to know that I'm not in the struggle.
Hi stripeyblanket,
It’s understandable to feel angry, it sounds like you had a very difficult time growing up with your mum and her issues with alcohol. There is no justification for her behaviour, but it helps me to remember that alcoholism / substance use disorder is an illness, and sometimes an unhelpful coping strategy for other mental illnesses like depression, and it is very difficult to recover from alcoholism and addiction, unfortunately. It definitely wasn’t your fault that your mum couldn’t get better or take better care of you, her addiction probably drove a lot of her behaviour and caused her to push you away. You definitely deserved better in life, and becoming a parent ourselves makes us evaluate our own childhoods in a new light so it’s understandable that you’ve thought about this more. Have you ever had counselling to discuss how you feel? I’ve found that very helpful over the years.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen this, but it helps me to remember the Nacoa 6 C’s:
I didn’t cause it
I can’t control it
I can’t cure it
I can take care of myself
I can communicate my feelings
I can make healthy choices
Please come back any time to message here or call the helpline. Take good care of yourself.
Hello
All of our experiences are different but we are all connected by one thing. Our parents drinking and the effect that has on our lives. You mention the word anger and that's OK. Your allowed to be angry.
Nacoas 6 Cs message made a massive impact on me and talking through with w therapist. That the hardest part talking and understanding your past can take a lot of work on your self but trust me it's worth it. On the other side is hope and think of the role model your son has.
You sound like a beautiful person and a wonderful mummy.